Since our feedback from our second presentation we decided to change our character designs.

Our T-Rex is now primarily based on Amy’s design as we felt that is more expressive and we looked up some herbivorous dinosaurs that existed at the same time as the tyrannosaurs. We found the Parasaurolophus were from the same time and looked quite nice, so we chose them as the secondary characters in our animation.

Since we now have the two characters designs I did a quick drawing tutorial so that we could all sketch the characters and have them look the same.

Below is the research that I did for our second presentation. I read several books based around the anatomy of storyboards and different camera angles and techniques that filmmakers use. I made notes on them and shared them with the group so that we had an equal footing.

We all mentioned The Land Before Time as one of our favourite dinosaur films and this made me dig out my VHS of it and try to watch it. It kept flipping jumping which was frustrating but I did find out that the franchise is still going! Apparently a few more films are to be released soon, I knew there was a TV series that was going but I’m surprised that they are still making films of it.

I looked up different styles of dinosaurs, and dinosaurs that would have been alive at the time of the Cretaceous Era to see what the environment was like and what other species we could have as another character alongside our T-Rex. I do kind of want a Pterodactyl (specifically a Hatzegopteryx) but that isn’t really simple.

I also cited Rayman as one of our influences in the design of our characters as we now want our dinosaur to have floating feet.

I just found this article particularly interesting. There’s other events that it talks about but the bit about the Titanic is what I was looking for.

“#5. Morgan Robertson Writes About the Titanic… 14 Years Early

A hundred years before James Cameron turned douchebaggery into an art form at the Oscars, American author Morgan Robertson wrote a sh***y book called Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, about the sinking of an “unsinkable” ocean liner. When you see the cover, you figure you’re pretty clearly looking at a fictionalized version of the Titanic story.

No surprise there; it’s a story that’s been told over and over (there were 13 Titanic movies before Cameron’s, including one by the Nazis) but Robertson’s book was first.

Where it Gets Weird:

He was so eager to be first, apparently, that he didn’t bother to wait for the Titanic to actually sink before writing about it. The Wreck of the Titan was published in 1898, 14 years before RMS Titanic was even finished being [cheaply] built.

The similarities between Robertson’s work and the Titanic disaster are so astounding that one has to imagine if White Star Line built Titanic to Robertson’s specs as a dare. The Titan was described as “the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men,” “equal to that of a first class hotel,” and, of course, “unsinkable”.

Both ships were British-owned steel vessels, both around 800 feet long and sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic, in April, “around midnight.” Sound like enough to keep you up at night? Maybe that’s why Robertson republished the book in 1912 just in case enough people didn’t know that he wrote it.

And you thought this guy was an ass.

Where it Gets Even Weirder:

While the novel does bear some curious coincidences with the Titanic disaster, there are quite a few things that Robertson got flat wrong. For one, the Titanic did not crash into an iceberg “400 miles from Newfoundland” at 25 knots. It crashed into an iceberg 400 miles from Newfoundland at 22.5 knots.

Wait, what the f**k? That’s one hell of a lucky guess!

What 41.1 million square miles looks like.

But maybe the weirdest thing about Titan were points that had nothing to do with the story, but check out after numerous inquires and expeditions to the Titanic wreck site.

For one, both the Titan and the Titanic had too few lifeboats to accommodate every passenger on board; the Titan carrying “as few as the law allowed.” While Robertson decided to be generous and include four lifeboats more on his ship than Titanic, it’s an odd point to bring up when you consider that lifeboats had nothing to do with the f**king story. When Titan hit the iceberg (starboard bow, naturally), the ship sank immediately, making the point made about lifeboats inconsequential. Why the f**k mention this?!”